China Olympic News

China: Plot on Olympic athletes foiled
AP
April 10th

China said Thursday it had uncovered a criminal ring planning to kidnap athletes and others at the Beijing Olympic Games.
Thirty-five members of a ring based in the restive western Xinjiang region were arrested, Ministry of Public Security Spokesman Wu Heping told a news conference.
“We face a real terrorist threat,” Wu said. The arrests took place between March 26 and April 6, he said.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror hijackings, China has tried to portray the simmering separatist rebellion in Xinjiang as being fueled by terrorist organizations in Central Asia and the Middle East. But evidence made public has been scarce.
Western embassies asked Beijing for more information after authorities said they broke up an attempt to hijack a plane in western China last month but so far no evidence has been provided, diplomats have said.
On Thursday, Wu said the ring was plotting to kidnap athletes, foreign journalists and other visitors to the August Games. He added that police had also confiscated almost 22 pounds of explosives and eight sticks of dynamite and “jihadist” literature in the latest raids in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.
Wu also provided further details on a second group arrested in January, alleging they had been manufacturing explosives and were plotting to attack hotels, government offices and military targets in Shanghai, Beijing and other cities.
Wu said the gang had been acting on orders from a radical Islamic Xinjiang independence group, East Turkestan Islamic Movement.
While the United States has labeled the East Turkestan Islamic Movement a terrorist organization, the State Department alleges widespread abuses of the legal and educational systems by the communist authorities to suppress Uighur culture and religion.

Note the double-speak of Rogge!!!
Athletes who take Tibet stand ‘face Olympic cut’
April 11th
Times Online

Athletes who display Tibetan flags at Olympic venues — including in their own rooms — could be expelled from this summer’s Games in Beijing under anti-propaganda rules.
Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said that competitors were free to express their political views but faced sanctions if they indulged in propaganda.
He accompanied those comments with an admission that the Games were in “crisis” after pro-Tibet protests engulfed the Olympic torch relay.
Mr Rogge’s call for Beijing to abide by its promise to address human rights was given short shrift by Beijing, which bluntly told him to keep politics out of the Games.

Japan says no to Chinese torch guards
April 11th
TOKYO
(Reuters)

Japan will not allow the squad of Chinese flame guards to intervene with the Beijing Olympic torch’s progress when it arrives in a Japanese city this month, the national police head was quoted as saying on Friday.
“We should not violate the principle that the Japanese police will firmly maintain security,” Kyodo news agency quoted Shinya Izumi, head of the National Public Safety Commission, as saying.
“We do not know what position the people who escorted the relay are in,” Izumi was quoted as saying. “If they are for the consideration of security, it is our role.”
The torch is set to arrive in Nagano, central Japan, where the Winter Games were hosted in 1998, on April 26, after passing through Buenos Aires, Mumbai, and Canberra, among other cities.

Wild Thing’s comment…….
There is a lot happening regarding ithe Olympics so I thought I would start to keep a record of news that is important about it.